"Dive Angela, Dive"

 My daughter Angela is a “Dumpster Diver.”  What is a Dumpster Diver?  Let me share portions of an article by Kari Abate and Kyle Looby on “The Art of Dumpster Diving:”

Dumpster diving is the deliberate art of gleaning perfectly usable items from commercial and residential dumpsters. It is legal in most areas as long as there are no signs posted against trespassing. To be sure, check your city ordinances, or just call the police department.

The term dumpster diving refers to the position most divers assume in order to retrieve items without actually getting in the dumpster: Picture yourself balanced on the edge of the dumpster, head in the dumpster and legs in the air behind you. (Novice divers may experience some initial discomfort around the abdomen and ribcage. This will pass.)

Safety should always take precedence. No bag of sheets or even the mother lode of brand-name designer shirts is worth a trip to the hospital!

Now, the fun part. Where does one dive? Generally speaking, any store that has a dumpster is up for grabs. Retail dumpsters include craft supply stores, party supply stores, drug stores (a great source of greeting cards, boxed chocolates, small gifts, cases of soda and toys), book stores, department stores, discount stores, pet supply stores, home décor stores, thrift stores and hardware stores.

Once you've started diving, you'll never look at a dumpster the same way again. To us, they are no longer merely trash receptacles, but rather secret treasure chests waiting to be looted.  But you'll never know what you may find in your local dumpsters unless you look, so get out there and lift some lids.

Strip malls are the best places to find retail dumpsters -- they're usually located behind the buildings. Apartment complexes, meanwhile, are a great source of furniture, clothes, small appliances, televisions, VCRs, household items and more.

Angela’s specialty is discarded furniture.  She has become very successful transforming old cabinet doors into plaques with Scripture on them.  People adorn their homes with these plaques creating a market for Angela to sell more.  Family has bought several from her and given them as gifts for showers, birthdays, and Christmas.  People love the transformed dumpster treasures.

Angela has refurbished tables and chairs, coffee tables and chairs, and home entertainment centers.

Angela has raided my shed for items that could be transformed into décor treasures.  She collected old car tags, a broken John Deere lawnmower steering wheel, an old sign or two and probably some stuff I haven’t missed until I need them.

Angela may have inherited the art of dumpster diving from my dad.  He did not dumpster dive, but he did collect produce that a grocery store dumped and daddy supplied the barrels.  It is amazing what stores discard.  We never had to buy butcher knives or aprons.  There was a steady supply from the store.

We started out slopping the hogs with this foodstuff, but we realized there was a lot of good food tossed away.  Pardon the pun, but we did eat high on the hog until the health department informed the grocery store that dad could no longer get the waste claiming that it was unhealthy.

All I can say the only way it was unhealthy it got the hawgs slaughtered and the Hopper family was a little on “porky” side in our size.  I wonder how people got by for centuries without health department regulations.

 

I read another article on dumpster diving where a father, a dumpster diver, cooked a very delicious breakfast from his dumpster dive.

Once you get over the initial shock that people actually do this, you'll quickly realize that it isn't as gross as it sounds. Commercial dumpsters are very clean because employee trash is bagged, while the good stuff is usually in a box or tossed in loosely. Actually, store dumpsters usually smell quite good because of the discarded candles, potpourri and perfume. (Most dumpsters smell like the stores that use them!) Dumpsters are designed to keep critters out, so you typically won't run into rats and other vermin.

As Americans, we are wasteful.  Bins of good food, clothing, and household items head to dumps while people need food, clothing, and shelter.  Company policies and government regulations prevent or halt what could be given to shelters and charity organizations for distributions to those who need it.

On another venue, our churches have all the resources to feed spiritual food, but as a nation we are suffer spiritual malnutrition.  A great example comes from a survey of women in churches by Dr. Denise George.

 In her book, What Women Wish Pastors Knew, she writes,

All around me I see women who exist with the barest scriptural basics and live with thin skin stretched over bones of spiritual malnourishment . . . As a nation, we possess all the necessary resources to feed starving people the life-giving meat of Scripture, yet hungry people search the trash bins of secularism in search of spiritual food.

 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.  And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:9-10 KJV).

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord (Amos 8:11 KJV). 

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in (Matthew 25:35 KJV).